Tadashi no Egao
by RisemboolRanger
Summary: One-shot. Side story to "Thinking Out Loud". The death of a loved one is always painful and for Chihiro, it's no different. With it, she loses all love, meaning and music in life. But it's the music that can get her back on track. She needs to remember in order to create music again and, in turn, she needs to create music in order to remember. Tadashi/OC


Everyone has their own way of dealing with pain. Everyone has friends, hobbies and other coping mechanisms they can use to distract themselves from their grief and find reasons to keep on living. But for Chihiro, she had nothing. She'd never really had friends, her family life had always been detached, and now her music - her only lasting passion - did nothing but increase her heartache. Her entire world had been one person and now that world had been ripped away from her forever.

Loss was something she'd never dealt with before. She'd never really had the people to care about to then notice any absence after they'd gone. Now it was all she could think about and she simply couldn't handle it. She hadn't even gone to the funeral. She'd intended to, of course. She'd worn the old black dress she'd used for her first public piano recital. But when she'd gotten to the house and seen everyone else dressed in black too, and worse, his photograph surrounded by candles, she'd bricked it and had to leave. The heavy sense of loss there had been overpowering. She couldn't afford to add that to her grief too. It was already stifling her.

That had been the only time she'd left the house since it had happened. It hadn't helped. She'd only retreated further back into her sorrow.

As the weeks had gone on she'd forced herself to be braver and face the outside world more. Anything to try and escape the unrelenting torment in her mind. Her family and the consequent doctors could do nothing to help her. Nobody could. He was the only one who'd been able to put a true smile on her face and he'd never be there to do that for her again. He'd left her behind, as well as his own family and friends.

Chihiro found herself watching those people very carefully. Whenever she left her house it would be to visit the coffee shop or the university. She never went inside either of them - she would just loiter nearby in the hopes of catching a glimpse of one of the other people whose lives he'd touched. She never dared to try and talk to them. She even took care to make sure they'd never see her. She'd never liked to get close to people and she now realised with great bitterness how right she'd been to do so. The one person she'd allowed herself to get close to had so easily shattered her world in just one night.

Yet she still sought out his loved ones, just for those quick glances at them. She knew that these people carried around the same grief that she did, so how did they manage to keep on living when she could not? These encounters physically provided her with nothing, yet they still gave her a final sense of connection to him, which she already felt was horrifyingly slipping away.

She still had pictures of him. There were varying photos on her cell phone - some of the two of them together, then others that she'd taken sneakily whilst he'd been working. There was also the silly one they'd done the day there'd been an open photo booth in the city centre. The one she'd always hated because it made her face look too wide, but she hadn't had the heart to get rid of it and had stuck it to her memo board instead, neatly covering her side of the photo with the corner of an old certificate that was already pinned to the board. But these were just external images for her eyes to see. Her real memories seemed to be fading by the day and she felt like she was unable to stop it.

The more Chihiro watched his friends and his little brother - not so similar in looks, yet so much like him in energy - the more depressed she felt with herself. She watched as his friends grew as a group, in spite of his absence, honouring his memory. She watched as they became a team of justice, soon known city-wide by the whole of San Fransokyo. She watched as they were able to achieve great heights and do incredible things for their city. He would have been so proud of them.

Yet she mostly sat around the house and did nothing. She couldn't do great things like his friends did. She couldn't do anything. She wasn't strong. She wasn't intelligent like they were... Even though he'd told her time and time again that she _was_ intelligent - that creativity was one of the highest forms of intellect. But now she didn't even feel creative anymore. Creativity required inspiration and her inspiration had left her the same day that he had.

Plus her music only made her feel miserable now. It didn't make her feel good anymore. It was probably the one thing that reminded her of him the most, and she wasn't sure that was what she wanted. Remembering him hurt her to her very core, yet forgetting him felt like an endless void of nothingness. No life, no point. There was no lesser evil of the two. She just wanted to remember him in peace, if only her heart would let her. Everyone always said to remember loved ones with happy thoughts, not sad ones, but how was she supposed to do that when sadness was all she felt?

People had already used to make plenty of jokes over how she wasn't a happy person. " _Don't smile - it might crack your mask_ ," they'd say. Or, " _Did the winds change and your face got stuck like that?_ " It had always been a passing comment from a colleague or a friend of her mother's, usually made in good humour, but sometimes Chihiro had worried that maybe people really thought she was actually just a miserable human being.

That wasn't true at all. And up until a few months ago she'd actually been happier than she ever had in her life. She couldn't help it if it just didn't always show. She couldn't help that her face simply looked that way. Her lips turned down slightly if she let her expression go blank and her eyebrows were set fairly wider apart than most people's. She'd grown used to the permanently sad puppy dog look it had given her - preferable to the smile that she'd never liked; that pushed her cheeks up too high and gave her eyes old person wrinkles - but apparently everyone else thought she just had a never-ending case of the Monday blues.

Everyone but him. Sure, he'd teased her about it too, but his words had been sweet, loving, setting her heart aflutter every time. " _Let's see that beautiful smile_ ," he'd say in unnecessary attempts to cheer her up. Or, " _Why isn't my sun shining today?_ " Just the memory of it sent a sear of pain through her chest, though it was followed by a strange trickle of warmth that coursed through her heart, even though she'd felt like it had stopped beating months ago.

She didn't usually allow herself to remember him in such clarity, but that brief feeling of warmth had surprised her. The memory had hurt, yet it had also felt weirdly good too... Had she been going about this all wrong the whole time?

Still staring at the photo attached to her memo board, Chihiro reached out and gingerly pulled away the corner of her music certificate to reveal the whole image. There was her face, next to his, smiling that awfully wide smile. She would never normally have smiled like that for photos - she'd generally perfected a slight lift of the corners of her lips to banish her usual kicked puppy look, but not so much that they spread all across her face - but in this instance she really hadn't been given a choice. The memory pricked at the corners of her heart and mind, begging to be remembered, and for once, she allowed it...

 _"Come on, Chi. Just one photo and then we can go and celebrate! Aunt Cass has made a special mascarpone and blueberry cake just for you!"_

 _Chihiro raised her eyebrows. "Did you just give away the big surprise?"_

 _"It's not the whole surprise," he countered. "I haven't told you what it looks like."_

 _"Then let's go so I can find out," she said, tugging on his hand to try and pull him in the other direction._

 _"Hold up a second..." He managed to cut across her, still without releasing her hand, and steered her back towards the photo booth in question. "I wanna get a photo first!"_

 _"But I don't like taking photos!" Chihiro pouted in protest._

 _"Come on, it's free - it's not like it's going to cost anything," he insisted. "We can get a copy each. And if you really, really, really don't like it then you can throw yours away, okay?"_

 _Chihiro was reluctant to give in. "But what would I want my own copy for? You're the one bribing me into this with promises of cake."_

 _"Use it for inspiration," he suggested brightly. "You always compose such sad music! I know you just gave an amazing recital with it, but you should really try something happy for a change." He then winked at her. "Or even I might start believing your whole kicked puppy and cloudy skies look."_

 _Chihiro rolled her eyes. "If I take the stupid photo then will you stop picking on me?"_

 _"It's a deal!"_

 _She had no choice but to allow him to successfully pull her over to the photo booth. They both ducked underneath the curtain into the cramped space. The tiny stool inside looked barely wide enough for even a child to sit on. He somehow managed to adjust the seat down to its lowest point and was just about able to fit his tall frame on top of it, his trademark baseball cap brushing the low ceiling. He pulled Chihiro over onto his knee, in full view of the camera. She made a face as her image was thrown up onto the screen alongside his._

 _"Quit frowning," he told her amusedly, busy selecting options along the edge of the screen. "Here. This looks like the one we want." His finger hovered over the button. "Alright, say cheese..."_

 _"Cheese," Chihiro said blankly, no trace of enthusiasm. The next thing she knew his hands were on either side of her face, his fingers hooking in between her lips to comically pull the corners of her mouth up into a smile. "Hey, what are you doing!" she protested, managing to avoid biting his fingers in the process._

 _"If you're not gonna smile then I'll do it for you," he grinned. "Now say cheese!"_

 _"Cut it out!" Chihiro pulled away, nearly falling off his lap but at least dislodging his fingers from her mouth._

 _He caught her before she could fall and laughed. "I'm just messing with you. But since you just slobbered my fingers I think you owe me a real smile now!"_

 _"I didn't slobber anything!" Chihiro protested. "And you were the one who shoved your fingers in my mouth!"_

 _"I didn't expect you to mistake them for cake." He made a show of wiping his hands on the leg of his jeans. Chihiro couldn't quite resist laughing. She could never resist for long. "Hey, is that the elusive smile I see?"_

 _"Yes, yes, it's a damn smile. Only because you're being such an idiot." Though even as she said it she couldn't quite chase the smile in question away. He'd always had a knack for doing that._

 _He grinned back in response. "Then in that case..." He pointed to the screen and Chihiro's gaze instinctively followed his finger. "Say cheese!" He slammed his hand on the button._

 _"That's cheating!" Chihiro objected as the screen changed, but it was too late. The machine was already whirring away as it coped the image down and printed it out._

 _"All's fair," he smiled innocently. A few seconds later, a photo strip popped out of the small slot below the screen. He pulled it out and held the matching images up for both of them to see. "There. That isn't so bad, is it?"_

 _Chihiro couldn't say she felt the same. She looked down at the double copies of her too widely beaming face - still on the verge of laughter - contrasting against his much more natural smile. "Urgh. I look like a blob."_

 _He wound an arm around her and gave her a light squeeze. "Then you're the loveliest, most beautiful, non-blobbiest blob there is."_

 _She couldn't help but laugh again. She elbowed him in the side. "You're such a goof."_

 _"The loveliest, most beautiful, non-blobbiest goof, right?" he grinned teasingly._

 _Chihiro giggled. "If you say so."_

 _She took the photo strip from his hand, inspecting it further. She guessed it wasn't quite so bad after all, the more she looked at it. He still looked as perfect and cheery as always. Even if she didn't like her face in it, at least it was a natural shot. Happy. Most people didn't see that side of her very much. Maybe she really could use it for inspiration, like he'd suggested. And if not she could just keep it and use something to hide her own face in the photo._

 _He watched her stare at the image for a while. His voice turned gentler this time. "Do you really not like it? We can take another one if you want?"_

 _Chihiro looked up into his concerned face. She smiled and then shook her head. "I think you might be right. It does make me want to try composing something happy after all."_

 _The answering smile she received was enough to make her definitely want to make that a reality._

Only it had never happened. It hadn't even been a week later that part of his university had burned down... With him inside. Photos were now the only lasting record of that smile.

She suddenly couldn't see the photo stuck to the memo board anymore. She hastily brushed away the tears that had blurred her vision. But even though the sadness remained, so did the warmth. Photos weren't the only thing that lasted. She still had her memories too. And they were all the more precious. Even photos couldn't do his smile justice like her memories could. She owed it to him to keep that alive.

She still had one last thing she needed to do for him. For the first time since it had happened, she felt inspired.

Chihiro unpinned the photo and took it with her as she grabbed a pen and a blank piece of sheet music from the untidy stack on her desk, then hurried over to the piano in the corner behind her bed. It was old and only small, but it still took up most of the space in her bedroom. She balanced the photo on the music stand above the piano, then uncapped the pen and neatly printed out her newly inspired title at the head of the page, in Japanese as well as English, as everyone in San Fransokyo was fluent in both.

 _Tadashi no Egao. Tadashi's Smile_.

She propped up the otherwise empty sheet in front of her, beside the photo, and began to play, flowing immediately into the melody that was already fabricating itself inside her head. And for once, the music she played was happy, finally relinquishing all of her pain. She liked to think that if he could have heard it he would have been proud. Even in death, he could inspire her one piece of happy music.

 **XXX**

 **Author's Note!**

My entry for the contest over at fanfiction-friends on deviantART. The theme for it was pain/tragedy. I normally wouldn't have entered since writing sad stuff really isn't my comfort zone, so that's WHY I decided to actually enter. How's that for logic? xD

I also decided to break in my very first ever Disney piece! Firstly, Big Hero 6... Disney, superheroes, Japanese influences, two of my favourite cities and super fun futuristic tech all rolled into ONE. AWESOME. MOVIE. Seriously, this jumped onto my list of top 10 Disney movies right with the first watch. For me, that's a very big deal. I watch even more Disney now than I did as a kid. Which was already a lot.

I really hope I didn't go too overboard with the sad stuff in this. I way preferred writing the fluffy flashback in the middle. I couldn't even end on a completely sad note - it still had to be at least bittersweet xD Go figure! It wasn't originally intentional to not mention Tadashi by name until right at the end (it was obvious who it was about anyway) but as it just kept happening that way I decided to just go with it.

Also trying something a little new with the title. The Japanese version just sounded prettier :)


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